On Weak Hamiltonicity of a Random Hypergraph

Abstract

A {\it weak (Berge) cycle} is an alternating sequence of vertices and (hyper)edges $C=(v_0, e_1, v_1, ..., v_{\ell-1}, e_\ell, v_{\ell}=v_0)$ such that the vertices $v_0, ..., v_{\ell-1}$ are distinct with $v_k, v_{k+1} \in e_{k}$ for each $k$, but the edges $e_1, ..., e_\ell$ are not necessarily distinct. We prove that the main barrier to the random $d$-uniform hypergraph $H_d(n,p),$ where each of the potential edges of cardinality $d$ is present with probability $p$, developing a weak Hamilton cycle is the presence of isolated vertices. In particular, for $d \geq 3$ fixed and $p=(d-1)! \frac{\ln n + c}{n^{d-1}}$, the probability that $H_d(n, p)$ has a weak Hamilton cycle tends to $e^{-e^{-c}}$, which is also the limiting probability that $H_d(n,p)$ has no isolated vertices. As a consequence, the probability that the random hypergraph $H_d(n, m=\frac{n(\ln n + c)}{d}),$ where $m$ potential edges are chosen uniformly at random to be present, is weak Hamiltonian also tends to $e^{-e^{-c}}$.